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Regardless of what Zhou Zishu says on the matter, Bitch is not Beiyuan’s cat. Bitch is a heathen who had followed him home one fateful Friday evening after he’d survived what had then felt like the worst fucking work day of his life, sniffing at his ankles like she’s a dog instead of a street cat as he waited to cross the road to his building, and he’d let her in because he was tired, had a bleeding heart and was in dire need of decent company after pretending to enjoy the awful sound of Helian Zhao’s voice droning on and on about statistics for two hours, even if it was from a cat with one mangled eye. She’s not his pet, and he’s sure he could let her leave out the door any day of the week and she’d have enough survival skills to make it in the wild.
“You have her food imported from France,” Zishu had deadpanned the day he told him as much, looking thoroughly unimpressed at the sight of Bitch hissing at him from her cushion. Bitch, for reasons Beiyuan still can’t fathom, refuses to extend even a modicum of her usual playful behavior around Zishu, and instead insists on hissing at him like he stuck his hand into her food bowl or kicked her in the guts. It’s identical to the way Zishu treats nearly everyone he likes in his life, and Beiyuan can tell that, despite all the barbed comments Zishu makes about Bitch being unreasonably fat and the inflammatory hissing on Bitch’s end, they really like each other.
“That doesn’t mean I’m attached , ” Beiyuan pointed out. Bitch had mewled loudly at that, affronted and closest to what Beiyuan assumes is the street cat equivalent of fuck you. She really did have a bit of an attitude problem.
“All her food is gourmet ,” Zishu continued, and yeah, it was pretty damning when he said it like that, but it wasn’t that bad. “She has a cat tower in your office. You have Ping An take her to pet spas. You pay Jiuxiao an atrocious amount of money to have him play with her when you go to conferences out of town. He’s in college, he doesn’t need five grand just for playing fetch with your cat while you’re gone for two days.”
Beiyuan nearly snickered at that. “He should be thankful for that kind of money. Bitch is a delight.”
“Bitch nearly took his eye out over a rubber ball last week.” Zishu huffed. “Just admit that she’s basically going to be the first name on your will.”
Of course, Beiyuan does no such thing. He still hasn’t, because Bitch is still not his cat. Bitch, much like Beiyuan that fateful Friday night, was bored, tired, sick and hungry. That’s why she’d followed him home, sniffing at his ankles until he caved in, handed his bag over to Ping An, hauled the mangled cat into his arms and carried him to the elevator to his place. He’d let Ping An fuss over her and then fussed over her himself once Ping An had left for the night, because as pathetic as he looked that night, tired beyond belief and aching down to the infinitesimal spaces between his joints, Bitch looked worse. He’d let her stay the night. She’d stayed the night after that, and the night after that, and had simply never left. She’s just a stray leeching off the warmth of his house and his hospitality who liked to sleep on him anytime he laid down to nap.
None of this explains why his heart feels like it’s about to plummet to the ground when he comes home one day and the first thing Bitch does is vomit on his shoes instead of performing her usual ritual of sniffing at his ankles until he picks her up.
“Fuck,” Beiyuan says, with far too much feeling for twelve minutes past midnight as the stupid cat lets out the most miserable whine he’s ever heard and flops onto her back like she’s made of putty. She’s been acting weird all fucking week, eating enough to put on extra weight and then zoning out by the window for hours, hissing at Beiyuan at the slightest inconvenience, clawing at Jiuxiao over a toy of all things when she knows better than to behave like that, and he hadn’t realized she was actually sick until she was hurling onto his shoes. He is, quite possibly, the absolute worst, and if Bitch chooses to leave after this —
“… I’ll call the valet.” Ping An says, dismayed either at the vomit or at the fact that he’s just lost another hot date with mediocre Netflix shows and his right hand, and goes to get Beiyuan a new pair of shoes.
Beiyuan holds Bitch in the car even though her carrier is right there, and he tells himself that it’s not because he’s worried. He’s not . Bitch, obviously, has enough guts to have survived on the streets as long as she has. She has a scar on her face, for fuck’s sake. Bitch likes to bite Zishu for fun, even though Zishu has a Glock in the pocket of his suit jacket and a slippery trigger finger on the best of days. She’s tough, and she’s resilient, and she can’t possibly die and leave him alone in his stupid apartment. The shipment for her food for this month hasn’t even arrived yet. He’d gotten her a new flavor he thought would suit her delicate taste buds, and —
— she’s not his cat, but she is a thorn by his side and a pain in his ass constantly, and she can’t die, at least not until he says she can.
Bitch meows indignantly, slapping him with her paws, and demands ear scratches like she hadn’t vomited over all of the three thousand four hundred and seventy US dollars he’d spent on those shoes less than seven minutes ago. His hands shake when he does as she wants, and she melts like she’s a bag of bones when he finds the right spot behind her ears. The city lights filter in through the window, and her golden fur seems more orange than usual when she turns towards it.
“Ping An,” Beiyuan says, watching her beady eyes flutter shut as she yawns, “what am I going to do if she dies?”
“She’s not dying, sir,” Ping An says, and pulls into the parking lot of the closest vet’s clinic.
Ping An grabs Bitch’s carrier even though the cat is snug in Beiyuan’s arms and ushers them inside. He’s holding Beiyuan’s blazer and his own on his forearm, the carrier in his hand and the stupid tote bag Zishu always makes fun of him for is slung on his shoulder as he bustles to the reception with the single-minded focus he often has while approaching menial tasks, and seems to quickly give them a rundown of what’s happened with Bitch. The Bitch in question squirms in Beiyuan’s arms, completely oblivious to the crisis he’s having about her impending death, and clearly wants to bolt towards the water dispenser with enough speed to knock it over with her fat little body for fun.
When Ping An doesn’t return immediately, Beiyuan breaks out of his reverie and moves towards the reception. The receptionist, far taller and broader than the average man, much more intimidating as he hunches over the counter with a semi-apologetic look on his face, is saying, “I’m sorry, but we’re a clinic that specializes in exotic animals. I’m not sure if — ”
“She’s sick,” Ping An interrupts, hackles raised like a threatened mother hen, “and you know better than me that the nearest vet’s won’t be open at this hour. Please, could you figure something out for her?”
“I think she’s dying,” Beiyuan adds. He’s so tired and so old and his fucking cat is sick and weighs like her bones are reinforced steel.
The receptionist’s eyes flash first to him, and then to Bitch, and then back to him. Whatever he sees must have been absolutely pathetic, because his eyes soften just slightly.
A beat of silence passes, and then he says, “I’ll check if the doctor is free.”
The doctor, as it turns out, is free. As soon as the receptionist tells him as such, a nurse, built like a brickhouse and a good two heads taller than Ping An, collects Bitch from Beiyuan and leads them to the examination room. In the meantime, as the nurse — who introduces himself as Nua’har in a gruff, awkward voice that reminds Beiyuan oddly of the way Zishu speaks around children — takes Bitch’s vitals and weighs her and entertains her with snapping fingers and quiet praises — that she positively eats up because she’s an attention whore like that — Beiyuan sits down, drinks some water from the bottle in Ping An’s soccer mom tote bag and texts Zishu: I think Bitch is dying.
That is not possible. Bitch is immortal. Zishu texts back immediately, because Zishu has never slept at a decent hour a single day in his life and probably never will, and the text is immediately followed by another: Fuck, if she dies you’re breaking the news to Jiuxiao.
Ping An, in the four minutes it had taken for the text conversation to happen, has somehow wheedled the receptionist, Ashinlae, from before into conversation about their practice. They haven’t been open long and business is slow (hence why the reception is unmanned right now) but the doctor who runs the practice is apparently a big deal. (Beiyuan, an attorney for the world’s sleaziest corporate family, doesn’t recognize the name Wu Xi even though he really feels like he should.) They deal with bigger animals, usually ones in zoos or captive breeding programs, and have lots of opinions on the way animals are treated. Nua’har, meanwhile, simply comes up to Beiyuan and reassures him that Bitch isn’t dying and seems perfectly healthy.
“You like her, don’t you?” Beiyuan says, eyeing the demon cat in question as she snuggles into Nua’har’s chest like a traitor. Last Beiyuan checked, Nua’har wasn’t the one importing food from France for her to live a comfortable, cushy life.
“She’s a delight,” Nua’har admits, and smiles slightly. Beiyuan can’t even hate the guy because he seems, against all odds, a nice, decent, and competent nurse. He seems to want to ask something else, presumably about Bitch’s eye and the scar around it, when the door to the examination room is pushed open and another figure steps in.
The first thing Beiyuan notices about him is the shoes — they’re ratty converses, the pair that used to be fashionable when he was in high school, probably, covered in what’s either splatters of blood or betadine. Definitely past their prime, but still comfortable if the person is still wearing them. His scrubs are tighter around the waist than the shoulders, and the brightness of the tablet in his hand is turned down to the lowest setting. There’s a watch on his left wrist, and a stethoscope around his neck. Now that he thinks about it, there’s something vaguely familiar about him.
And once Beiyuan looks up at his face, he feels the distinctive, dreadful feeling of oh, fuck right down to the yellow marrow of his bones rather than saying it out loud because —
1) It’s a good face. A great face, even. All sharp angles in just the right places, a beauty spot under the arch of his right eyebrow that distorts the symmetry of his face in the best way possible. If he were to smile, there would be the slight hint of crow’s feet around his eyes. Beiyuan knows this in vivid detail because he’s seen him laugh before.
2) That is, in fact, the same man from the loud nightclub Zishu had conned him into going two weeks ago, the man with the nice hands and warm eyes whose lips tasted pink from the strawberry daiquiri he’d been drinking at the bar, and he was apparently a veterinarian. No wonder the name had seemed so fucking familiar when Ashinlae mentioned it — Beiyuan had this guy’s tongue down his throat at 2 A.M on a work night, not even drunk enough to be blaming it on the alcohol like he could have when he was in grad school, and now that same man is Bitch’s vet .
Beiyuan has it on good authority that his whole life is just one massive joke. He doesn’t even do casual, no-strings-attached relationships, sex or no sex, so of course the one time he breaks his own rules it has to come back to bite him in the ass.
“Her name is Bitch?” The doctor is asking, lifting one regal eyebrow at Nua’har as he tries to get Bitch seated on the examination table. Bitch isn’t having any of it, wiggling around like a hot sausage even though she’d been okay with living on Nua’har’s chest three minutes ago. Attention whore. She mewls pathetically, and the stab of guilt that goes through Beiyuan is instantaneous.
“Her name is Bitch,” he says, and watches as the doctor essentially turns to stone at the sound of his voice. Beiyuan gets a fleeting sense of glee that he’s not the only one being made an ass out of tonight, and then it completely fizzles once the doctor turns to look at him and his gaze flickers from the top of his head to the tips of his shoes like he’s seeing him and thinking about the blue light of the night club’s bathroom and the taste of tonic water on his mouth. Ears red, he offers his hands out to Nua’har. “I can hold her. She’s probably just restless.”
Wu Xi swallows. It’s infuriating, how sexy the line of his throat is, and Beiyuan considers tearing his hair out of his own scalp just to feel something other than crippling embarrassment.
“Bitch is unwell?” He asks, thankfully not bringing up what can only be described as the most mortifying ordeal of Beiyuan’s life even though he looks like he really wants to, as Beiyuan settles into the examination table with Bitch on his lap. Bitch mewls, and the doctor turns his attention to her. He holds his hand out, and Bitch, obedient and willing to bend over backwards for the nearest handsome man, reaches out and places her paw on it. She lets him scratch her under the chin too, pleased and sated, and Beiyuan has never wanted to be a cat more than he does at that point.
“She vomited on my shoes today,” Beiyuan informs him, and then sighs. “I don’t know, she’s been off all week. Eating a lot, gaining weight, being miserable. I can’t tell what’s wrong with her but she’s definitely not doing well. I think she’s dying.”
Wu Xi, if thrown off by Beiyuan’s dramatic declaration, doesn’t show it. “I see. Well, let’s take a look, shall we?”
Bitch is, apparently, a better patient than she is a houseguest. She lets the doctor poke around with minimal fuss, and when she does kick up a fuss, she’s appeased quickly with quiet scratches. At one point, she sits extremely still, and Wu Xi smiles at her until his eyes disappear, and he says, “Good girl,” in his quiet, warm voice. Beiyuan blushes right down to his collarbones and hopes to god that no one is looking too hard at him.
“Okay,” Wu Xi says, after a while, and scratches Bitch under the chin one last time before raising his eyes to meet Beiyuan, and oh , there it is again — the look, like he knows the shape of Beiyuan’s clavicles against his teeth. He smiles, awkward and so, so endearing, and sighs. “She’s not dying, she’s just pregnant. Congratulations.”
“Wait, what?” Beiyuan asks, bewildered, and then lifts his bastard cat up to glare at her. His bastard cat, bored and aloof, doesn’t even blink. “You’re copulating with street cats ? Are you insane? I give you a roof over your head and fill your six stomachs and give you belly rubs when you bother me while I’m working and this is how you repay me? By making me a grandfather at thirty three? What would Zishu say?”
Bitch lets out an indignant meow which is the Bitch equivalent of fuck Zhou Zishu and slaps him on the face with a paw.
“Ugh, you’re useless.” Beiyuan grouses. “The worst houseguest ever.”
The worst houseguest ever doesn’t look too angry about it the minute Beiyuan scratches her behind her ear, turning into putty like the little idiot she always has been, and he’s just relieved that Bitch isn’t dying like he thought she was. Wu Xi gives them additional instructions and runs his hand over Bitch’s sleek fur one last time before letting them know that they’re good to go.
Beiyuan deliberates over it for a total of thirty seconds once everything’s said and done before he’s hoisting his horrible house guest into a one armed carry and reaching inside the pocket of his dress pants for the singular business card he always carries around for emergencies. Wu Xi’s eyes flicker from the card to his face, completely unreadable yet so interesting, and doesn’t say anything for the longest time.
“If you ever have any legal troubles,” Beiyuan says, and then, in a rare show of bravery, smiles and adds, “or if you ever want company that isn’t animals. My personal number is somewhere there.”
You’re hot, I’m hot, he thinks, what’s the worst we could do to each other?
“Company sounds nice,” Wu Xi says, and he goes red all the way to the tip of his ears when his fingers brush against Beiyuan’s, “Thank you, Beiyuan.”
Bitch mewls, the cat equivalent of that’s fucking disgusting echoing loudly in the halls, and Wu Xi aptly uses this opportunity to rub her belly while Ping An sorts out paperwork at the front desk, and for the first time in a long, long time, Beiyuan thinks, ah, this might just work.